Chapter 3 02. The National Government was shaken by the flood

In the summer and autumn of 1931, it was not the Nakamura incident and other foreign-related topics that frequently appeared in the newspapers and the national governments at all levels, but a flood that had not happened in a century.The Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Kuomintang issued the "Message to the All Compatriots for the Relief of the Flood", which clearly and unmistakably called the flood a "national disaster." On September 8, the national government issued 80 million yuan of public bonds for disaster relief, which will be issued in two installments. The initial issuance of 30 million yuan within this month will be followed by another 50 million yuan within 12 days.The annual interest is 8%, issued at a 20% discount on the face value; the principal and interest will be repaid in 10 years.

In 1931 the climate was abnormal.Since the beginning of summer, most parts of China have been experiencing excessive rain for a long time, and there have been continuous heavy rains and torrential rains. The waters of the Pearl River, Yangtze River, Huaihe River and Songliao River Basin have surged, causing major floods across the country.Among them, the disasters in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Huaihe River Basin were particularly serious.According to statistics, the 8 provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Henan had a total of 51.27 million people affected by the disaster, with an economic loss of 2.254 billion yuan, while the entire central budget of the national government in 1931 was less than 1 billion yuan. Yuan.

The Jinjiang River and the lake in the Wuhan area are particularly affected by water damage. In the early morning of August 2, the Dandongmen railway dam burst, flooding directly into the urban area, and the entire area of ​​Hankou was submerged in water, reaching as high as the roof.Subsequently, Wutai, Wufeng and other dykes in Wuchang also collapsed one after another, and the Binjiang urban area of ​​Wuchang became a country.In the next few days, a total of 45 embankments were washed away in Hanyang, the highest place, and the river rushed straight in with wind and clouds.The three towns made up Zeguo, which was submerged in water for two months.Wuhan was hit hard by this, and gradually turned from prosperity to decline, and its status as the "thoroughfare of nine provinces" suddenly became obsolete.

In the face of the sudden torrent, the national government had more than enough heart but not enough power.Except for the drop-in-the-water relief that some local governments did to the disaster, the Nationalist government's first response to the flood was on July 25, which was more than a month before the major disaster in the Pearl River Basin.On this day, the Nationalist Government ordered that Xu Shiying and other nine members be appointed as members of the Relief Committee. Xu Shiying is an old man who lived to be 91 years old. He entered the officialdom during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty. He went through the three periods of the late Qing Dynasty, Beiyang, and the Republic of China. He was accepted by various political forces. He has been floating in officialdom for more than 60 years.Zhu Qinglan is a native of Harbin. In 1892, he served as a river work committee member of the Yellow River Restoration Project. He is an expert in river control and disaster relief.During the Revolution of 1911, he sympathized with the revolution and supported revolutionary activities.Later, when he was in charge of Heilongjiang, there were many benevolent policies that benefited the village. To commemorate his merits, the merchants named a new ship "Qinglan". In February 1925, he resigned from all positions to devote himself exclusively to philanthropy.

Represented by Xu and Zhu, among these relief committee members, there are some social sages, and none of them are powerful figures of the Nanjing Nationalist Government at that time. Make bricks without straw.For disaster relief, it is the last word that the government can provide the money, otherwise, no matter how powerful you are, it will be difficult to accomplish anything.After the establishment of the Relief Committee, despite all the efforts and painstaking efforts, there are few good recipes for disaster relief. On July 30, Xu Shiying sent a telegram to Chiang Kai-shek and submitted it to the Executive Yuan, saying that "the victims of the disaster did not die of water, but died of hunger. The tragedy has never been seen in the past century." He also asked the Ministry of Finance to issue 10 million yuan in disaster relief bonds.

Public debt is not cash, and for the victims of floods, it is far from quenching their thirst.As a result, the displaced victims can only rely on the poor relief of the people to survive.According to newspaper reports at the time, there were 150,000 victims in Hankou who were in urgent need of relief, but only one-third of the victims could be relieved by the eight shelters. Public and private organizations distributed steamed buns to the victims twice a day. The national government still can't come up with money. On August 12, the Legislative Yuan reported to the Kuomintang Central Political Conference that the national budget this year is expected to be short of 280 million yuan in total, and there is little alternative to disaster relief except raising public bonds.

Seeing that it is difficult to achieve anything by relying only on social talents, the national government set up a special flood relief committee on August 14 in order to coordinate disaster relief. Song Ziwen, Xu Shiying, Liu Shangqing, Kong Xiangxi, and Zhu Qinglan were appointed as members, with Song Ziwen as the chairman.In this list, the names of Song Ziwen and Kong Xiangxi appeared. Both of them were the "Great Gods of Wealth" of the National Government, especially Song Ziwen, who was definitely the top financial leader of the National Government in the 1920s and 1930s. With the addition of powerful members, the effect was seen immediately.On the day of its establishment, the committee held its first meeting, and decided to ask the government to order the competent ministries and committees to implement the water control plan as soon as possible, and notify the provincial governments to investigate the flood situation.The distribution of relief funds in each province is: Anhui, Hunan, and Hubei each have 170,000 yuan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Henan each have 130,000 yuan, Zhejiang 80,000 yuan, Hankou epidemic prevention expenses 20,000 yuan, and Sichuan emergency relief 10,000 yuan. On the 21st, the Relief Committee petitioned the national government to suspend all unurgent construction projects and implement the water control plan in advance.The tone is quite different, and the measures are also practical.

However, what is the concept of hundreds of thousands of disaster relief funds for a disaster that has never happened in a century? According to the "Declaration" on August 30, the Wuhan Garrison Command announced the disaster situation in Wuhan. The affected area reached 54 counties, with 14 million victims, of whom more than 200,000 died, 8 million mu of arable land was affected, and 7 million houses were lost; most of Changsha City Soaking in water, the central government allocated 170,000 yuan to no avail. Let's turn the lens back to the three towns in Wuhan that were hit the hardest.

At this time, He Chengjun, a veteran of the Kuomintang, was sitting in Wuchang.This man once followed Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing in the Revolution of 1911 and the War of Protecting the Law, and later followed Chiang Kai-shek and became a lobbyist for Chiang to communicate with the warlords of various factions and was reused.He has successively served as the director of Wuhan Operations, the director of the Hubei Appeasement Office, and the chairman of the Hubei Provincial Government.During his tenure as the chairman of Hubei Province, he encountered this once-in-a-century flood. The "smart star" in the Kuomintang army was helpless.It is useless to rely on Hubei to save itself, and it is even more useless to rely on the central government. He is well versed in the current situation and knows this well.In desperation, he turned his attention to Hunan, hoping that this "brother" who was less affected by the disaster would give him a hand.He Chengjun sent a telegram to He Jian, Chairman of Hunan Province, asking him to lift the rice ban.

There is a saying that "antiques in prosperous times, gold in troubled times". In troubled times, there is a more important strategic material than gold-grain, because no matter how good the gold is, there are times when rice noodles cannot be bought.Since ancient times, there has been a saying in China that "huguang is ripe, and the world is full". Hunan and Hubei are the granaries of China. But at that time, the rice in Hunan could not flow out of the province casually.After the Wuchang Uprising overthrew the Qing government, there was a period of time when the self-government and independence movements in various provinces in China were in full swing.In this movement, Hunan is the most vigorous one.Since we want to be independent, it is only natural to not allow strategic materials such as rice to flow out of the province.

At this time, it was He Jian who served as the chairman of Hunan Province.This man was born in Liling, Hunan, and he was a native Hunan warlord. After 1928, he served as the chairman of the Hunan Provincial Government for nine years.During this period, he took over the military and political power in Hunan, just like a "Emperor of Earth".Since Chiang Kai-shek wanted to use him to "encircle and suppress" the Red Army, he turned a blind eye.After the Red Army's Long March, he was forced to resign. Facing such an "Emperor of Earth", He Chengjun asked to lift the rice ban.Sure enough, on the day He Chengjun sent the telegram, He Jian replied: "The rice-producing counties along the lakeside of Hunan Province were also hit by floods, and the autumn harvest was hopeless. There is no way to remedy it. There is still insufficient grain in this province, so it is difficult to lift the rice ban." Pushed back. Without "reinforcement", He Chengjun's political career is facing a serious crisis. In the first ten days of August, when the three towns in Wuhan were flooded with water, some people attacked He on the grounds that the provincial government was not good at disaster prevention and relief.Although He has controlled the situation, he understands that the crisis has not passed.Why didn't want to sit still, he turned his eyes to the Nanjing central government again. He Chengjun is still very energetic. On August 18, Baker, an American consultant of the Nationalist Government, and others arrived in Wuhan to inspect the disaster situation, and investigated the relief methods for the victims and food supply.After his inspection, Baker believed that the severity of the disaster in Wuhan exceeded his original imagination, and there was really no specific solution for disaster relief. Nine days later, Zhu Qinglan, member of the Flood Relief Committee, flew to Wuhan to inspect the flood.After inspection, Zhu believed that the disaster in Hubei was so severe that large-scale relief was needed. Of course, the views of these "imperial envoys" would reach the ears of Chiang Kai-shek, the top decision-maker of the Nationalist government, and Chiang felt that he had to come forward. On August 28, Chiang Kai-shek took the Yongsui ship to Wuhan to inspect the floods. On the next day, He Chengjun and others were convened on the ship to discuss disaster relief measures. He ordered Hunan and Jiangxi provinces to relax the ban on rice, and ordered the Central Bank of Wuhan to allocate 300,000 yuan for mobile finance. It is now September, and the rainy season has passed in most parts of China. People in the three towns of Wuhan have been soaking in the flood water for more than a month.The most effective relief for them - some rice distribution from the neighboring province of Hunan - came late after the flood receded.And all of this was only possible under the premise that Chiang Kai-shek held an "on-site meeting". A few years later, the full-scale Anti-Japanese War broke out. When the national government troops fought against the Japanese army on the frontal battlefield, the commanders had their own selfish ideas and caused disastrous defeats. The scene was so similar to the story of the disaster relief in Wuhan in 1931! With the passage of time, this once-in-a-century flood finally receded gradually, and tens of millions of displaced people returned to their hometowns where they were wiped out by the flood. On the 13th, the financial team of the National Government Flood Relief Committee announced that it had received donations of 2,534,224.55 yuan in silver dollars, 2,935 yuan in small foreign currency, 3,318 copper dollars, and 73,316 taels in silver.The silver dollar is commonly known as "Yuan Datou", and its currency unit is yuan, which is the most reputable and most widely circulated currency in modern Chinese history; Xiaoyang is commonly known as "Xiaoyangtou", with Sun Yat-sen's head on the front, and its currency unit is jiao.If all these currencies are displayed together, there are all kinds of them. The commanders at the front saw the various armies in different uniforms and the variety of weaponry they brought with them, and putting their weapons together was like having a big obsolete world arms fair .On the Songhu battlefield, the most elite troops gathered. The 88th Division, 87th Division, and 36th Division under General Zhang Zhizhong are equipped with German weapons. He can also command his tankers to attack the Japanese who have been forced to the sea army.In Shanxi, however, soldiers under Commander Wang Mingzhang from Sichuan wore straw sandals, and they had never even seen what a tank looked like. This is Dr. Li Jifeng's overall description of the Chinese army that fought against the Japanese in the Anti-Japanese War in his book "Looking Back at the War of Resistance Against Japan". It's quite similar! In the great flood in 1931, a relatively large amount of foreign donations came from Emperor Hirohito of Japan. On August 22, the Japanese Emperor donated 100,000 yen to the Yangtze River Flood, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan remitted it to Mamoru Shigemitsu, the Japanese Minister to China in Shanghai, and asked Mamoru Shigemitsu to hand over the donation to Soong Ziwen.Mamoru Mamoru went to Nanjing, and while expressing condolences on behalf of the Japanese government, informed the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Emperor's donation for disaster relief.The amount of this donation is very similar to the 100,442 yen claimed by the Japanese government against the Chinese side for the Nakamura incident on August 17.